‹/› API OF THE WEEK

API of the Week: SYSTRAN's Cloud Based Multilingual App Development

The ability for a company to sell its products and services worldwide has never existed in the way it has in the last decade-and-a-half where widespread internet use, app stores and company ecosystems provided by companies like Salesforce have allowed a company to quickly reach a worldwide audience. With this international growth, however, come challenges. In some markets like tech, you might try to force all your customers to speak English. Even then however, some companies feel the need to localize in order to appeal to specific countries such as Germany, France or Japan to name a few.

My colleague at TMC, Paula Bernier broke the story today that SYSTRAN has a new cloud-based API for multilingual app development. This follows up on news in January that the company signed a License Agreement with Kingsoft, China's Largest Office Software Company. To learn more I conducted an interview with Craig Stern, SYSTRAN Software Marketing Manager, Americas which is being done in conjunction with the All About The API conference to be held this July in Las Vegas.

What APIs do you have available?

SYSTRAN.io is a set of APIs that enable real-time translation and natural language processing of 50 languages in web, mobile and enterprise applications.

SYSTRAN.io is based on the same language translation technology that powers SYSTRAN’s enterprise offering used by Symantec, Cisco, Airbus, Ford, Toyota, BNP Paribas, Accenture, Daimler, Barclays, defense and security organizations such as the U.S. intelligence community, NATO, Interpol and language service providers.

What are the benefits/ solutions they help provide?

Today, companies are born global. Language plays an important role in business and commerce. Cross-language customer communication, multilingual real-time intelligence and sentiment analysis of user generated content across the globe provides companies with a competitive edge.

SYSTRAN.io allows software developers, customer experience (CX) companies, multi-national marketing departments, social media and marketing technology companies, and online gaming developers to access the same software to develop multilingual applications that were once only available to large, international companies.

What new business opportunities do they potentially open up for your partners?

For customer support teams, real-time translation of complaints, customer feedback or service outages reduce call volumes and increase customer satisfaction. The aggregation and translation of this data using SYSTRAN.io can also result in better anticipation of localization needs and plans to better serve customers across the globe.

SYSTRAN.io is redefining global social networking by making real-time language translation the new standard. For social media technology companies, the ability to aggregate data and quickly measure sentiment analysis across 50 languages enables them to offer truly global services.

SYSTRAN.io is a natural solution for collaboration platforms and team messaging apps such as Slack, which offer simplified communication with team members around the world. A real-time language translation tool ensures that virtual team members who speak different languages are being heard for true collaboration. In today’s need-it-now environments, there's simply no time to click a drop-down box to choose a language or cut and paste. SYSTRAN.io is easily integrated into collaboration platforms for real-time translation.

Why should developers / decision makers choose to be part of your ecosystem?

SYSTRAN.io is a hosted 50-language toolkit that provides the flexibility of a modular platform and customization capabilities. Now companies of all sizes can develop multilingual applications that were once only available to large enterprise companies.

SYSTRAN.io features include:

· Real-time text to text translation

· Voice to text recognition and transcription

· Data extraction and restructuring

· Dictionary Management

· Anonymization

Capabilities include:

· Deep learning through language analytics

· Sentiment analysis of user generated content

· Understand and react to a universe of data in multiple languages

What are some of the cooler solutions that have been developed using your APIs?

One software developer from San Diego recently developed a mobile app that enables real-time translation of text messages in 50 languages. You simply write the text, select a language from a drop down and it instantly converts the message to that language. The app is currently in beta.

How do you market your APIs?

Currently the API is being made available grass roots with no advertising. We feel adoption will be rapid. The API can be accessed by visiting our website. To attract application developer interest, the API will allow 1 million characters to be translated free each month to early adopters for a limited time.

Come see the multilingual, international world of APIs at All About The API. The event will feature a variety of intensive hack-a-thons, in-depth company-focused workshops helping attendees understand the value propositions from key vendors, powerful keynotes, daily and nightly networking opportunities plus an exhibit hall full of companies demonstrating the latest innovations in today’s market place. Every business has to pay attention to the new opportunities they are presenting or potentially be displaced. We hope to see you July 18-21 2016 in Las Vegas!